PDF & Audio Book included. These are rare and long out of print.
Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible - By Isaac Asimov (1968)
PDF Book (x2): 1295 pages - ISBN 051734582X
Audio Book - Duration: 40 hours.
MP3 44.1khz, 32kbps
Source: audio cassettes

The Old Testament.

The Bible begins at the logical place - the beginning. The very first verse starts:
Genesis 1:1. In the beginning ...
The phrase "In the beginning" is a translation of the Hebrew word bereshith. In the case of several of the books of the Bible, the first word is taken as the title of the whole (much as Papal bulls are named for the two Latin words with which they lean.) The Hebrew name of the first book is, there, Bereshith.

The Bible was first translated into another language in the course of the third century B.C. and that other language was Greek. This Greek version was, according to tradition, based on the work of seventy learned scholars, and it is therefore known as the Septuagint, from a Latin word meaning "seventy!'
In the Septuagint, the various books of the Bible were, naturally enough, given Greek names. The Hebrew habit of using the first words as the name was not followed,and descriptive names were used instead.

The first book was named "Genesis," which means, literally, "coming into being." It implies a concern with births and beginnings which is appropriate for a book that begins with the creation of heaven and earth.

By ancient tradition, the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses, the folk hero who, according to the account given in the second through fifth books, rescued the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Modem scholars are convinced that this theory of authorship is not tenable and that the early books of the Bible are not the single work of any man. Rather, they are the combined and carefully edited version of a number of sources. Despite this, the full name of the first book of the Bible as commonly given in English translation remains "The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis."
_____________________________________________________________________________

The New Testament

Following the Book of Nehemiah in the Roman Catholic version of the Bible are two short historical books which are not found in either the Jewish or the Protestant canon. They are therefore part of the Apocrypha. First comes one that is set in the Assyrian period, roughly 700 B.C.; then one with a very confused chronology that speaks of Nebuchadnezzar, who was at the height of his power about 580 B.C.

These tales do not portray actual history, but seem to be what we would call today "historical romances." The fictional nature does not prevent them from serving religious or ethical purposes, of course, but since in this book I'm primarily interested in the secular aspects of the Bible, there will be a particular interest in trying to sort out the chronology.

The first of these tales is the Book of Tobit, which begins at once with the character for whom it is named:
Tobit 1:1. The book of the words of Tobit ...

Tobit is a form of the Hebrew name Tobiah, which, in its Greek form, is Tobias. In the Catholic version, The Book of Tobit is termed the Book of Tobias.

The date at which the book was written is not known for certain, but it may be about 200 B.C. It is possible that the author lived in Alexandria, which at that time was the capital of Egypt. About 200 B.C., Judea passed from the friendly hands of the Macedonian rulers of Egypt (the Ptolemies) to the much harsher grip of the Macedonian rulers of Syria (the Seleucids). A new period of persecution of the Jews began and the story of Tobit, dealing with the Assyrian persecution, five centuries before, reflects this.
The time in which the events described in Tobit are supposed to have happened are given:

Tobit 1:4. …[Tobit] in the time of Enemessar [Shalmaneser] King of the Assyrians was led captive ...